The big picture
Every Music League moves through three states from start to finish: Draft, Active, and Completed. While the league is Active, each round inside it cycles through four phases: Upcoming, Submitting, Voting, and Completed. Once every round has wrapped up, the league itself completes automatically.
A typical lifecycle looks like this:
- Draft — you're still setting it up.
- Active — you've launched. Round 1 sits in Upcoming until your chosen start date, then cycles through Submitting → Voting → Completed. The next round picks up where it left off and does the same thing. Repeat for every round.
- Completed — all rounds have finished, or a League Admin cancelled it. Standings, results, and the playlist stay viewable.
What are the three league states?
- Draft — Your league exists, but only you can see it. You can change any setting, add or remove rounds, and adjust the schedule freely. Drafts sit under the Drafts tab on your leagues page until you launch, and no invitations or notifications go out yet. Drafts stick around as long as your account does — you won't lose work if you set one aside for a while.
- Active — You've tapped Launch. The league is live, your invite link starts working, and any direct invitations queued during Draft are sent. From here, rounds run on the schedule you set.
- Completed — Every round has finished voting. The status flips to Completed automatically, no action required. Members can still open the league, scroll through every round's results and playlist, and look at the final standings — but nothing new can be submitted or voted on. A league its League Admin cancels early ends up here too, marked Cancelled (see "Can I cancel a league that's already running?" below).
What are the four round phases?
Every round inside an Active league moves through these phases in order:
- Upcoming — The round exists on the schedule but hasn't opened yet. Nothing for players to do here, but the round shows up on the league page so they can see what's coming.
- Submitting — Players pick songs that fit the round's theme and submit them. The submission phase runs from
opens_atuntil the submission deadline. - Voting — Submissions are locked, the round playlist is published, and players distribute their points across everyone else's songs.
- Completed — Voting has closed and results are revealed. The round is read-only from this point on; results, comments (if visible), and the playlist remain available for everyone to revisit.
In some places — like the schedule editor — you may see these called the Submission phase and Voting phase. They refer to the same thing as the Submitting and Voting phases above.
Why does Round 1 feel different?
When you launch a league, the league flips to Active right away — but Round 1 almost always stays in Upcoming for a while. That's by design. Round 1's opens_at is the date and time you picked when setting the schedule, and giving yourself a few days between launch and Round 1 opening lets people join via your invite link before submissions begin.
If you set Round 1 to open immediately at launch, the league still goes Active and Round 1 jumps straight to Submitting — but you lose the join window. For most leagues, setting Round 1 a few days out works best. See Inviting Players to Your League for more on how the invite flow works.
What happens if a round doesn't get enough submissions?
If fewer than two different players submit a song before the deadline, the round can't run a meaningful vote — you can't vote for your own songs, so a single submitter has nothing votable. In that case the round enters its voting phase but holds: no playlist is generated, no ballot opens, and there's no winner or points. A note explains the hold, and the league waits until the next round is scheduled to begin or the League Admin advances to the next round. Players who did submit are not penalized; the round simply doesn't produce a result.
For everything else — too few players to spend all their votes, too few songs for the per-song cap — the system auto-adjusts so voting can still run. See How Voting Rules Work (and How They Auto-Adjust) for the details.
When does the league complete?
Once the last round's voting period ends, the league checks itself and flips from Active to Completed automatically. There's no button to push and no admin action needed. Members get one final notification with the closing results, and from then on the league lives on as a record of what was played.
Completed leagues stay visible to every member. You can browse every round's results, replay the playlists, see who won, and revisit comments — exactly as they were on the final day. You just can't submit, vote, or add new rounds.
Can I cancel a league that's already running?
Yes. Cancelling ends the league now and keeps everything already played; deleting erases it as if it never happened. The Primary Admin finds Cancel league in the Danger Zone at the bottom of Edit league (the league's ⋮ menu). A confirmation page shows exactly what will happen before anything changes, and you can add an optional reason of up to 280 characters.
- What stops — the round in progress and every upcoming round. Songs and votes already cast in the round in progress are kept but won't count, and no more rounds open, remind, or notify anyone.
- What stays — finished rounds, their results, the standings, playlists, and stats, exactly as they were. Finished rounds still count toward everyone's achievements.
- Who's told — every player gets one notification that names the league and includes your reason if you gave one. The league page shows a note that the league was cancelled, with the same reason.
A cancelled league shows as Cancelled and behaves like any other completed league.
Can I reopen a completed league or add another round?
A league counts as ended the moment the last results are revealed for its last scheduled round — no matter when that round was originally scheduled to close. A cancelled league counts as ended from the moment it was cancelled. From that moment, how long ago the league wrapped decides what you can do:
- Within about two months — you can still add another round from Edit league and keep the league going. Adding a round to a cancelled league reopens it.
- Between two and six months — you can still add a round, but you'll see a heads-up first: rounds added now count toward each player's achievements but don't change the league standings.
- More than six months ago — the league is locked. You can't add a round or edit its schedule to restart it, and players can't be removed. This keeps the standings and history fair to everyone who played. If you want to run it again, use Create a new league — you'll be offered the option to invite everyone from the old league at once.
Can I delete my league?
From the Danger Zone at the bottom of Edit league (the league's ⋮ menu) — but only while nobody else has joined and nobody has been invited. After that, the button is disabled with the reason, because deleting the league would take it away from other people too. A league still in draft can always be deleted by its League Admin.
If other people are already playing and you want to stop, cancel the league instead: deleting means it never happened, cancelling means it's over and everything played stays.